[Prose's] modest-sounding book turns out to be beautifully wrought. And it blossoms into a smart, gimlet-eyed account of what 13-year-old Nico sees happening around her after the loss of the more alluring, glamorous and manipulative Margaret. Nico's experience goes well beyond the realms of adolescence and family dynamics and yields an unexpectedly rich, tart, eye-opening sense of Nico's world…Goldengrove is one of Ms. Prose's gentler books—far more so than the bitingly satirical A Changed Man. But it's not a sentimental one. It draws the reader into and then out of "that hushed and watery border zone where we live alongside the dead," and it does this with mostly effortless narrative verve. And it scorns the bathos of its genre, so it does not become an invitation to wallow in suffering. It prefers the comforts of strength, growth and forward motion.
—The New York Times
Goldengrove: A Novel
Narrated by Mamie Gummer
Francine ProseUnabridged — 8 hours, 10 minutes
Goldengrove: A Novel
Narrated by Mamie Gummer
Francine ProseUnabridged — 8 hours, 10 minutes
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Overview
“With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief. . . . “[Goldengrove is] a moving meditation on how, out of the painful passing of innocence and youth, sexuality and identity can miraculously emerge.”**-*Los Angeles Times
An emotionally powerful novel about adolescent love and loss from Francine Prose, the New York Times bestselling author of Reading Like a Writer and A Changed Man.
After the sudden death of her beloved older sister, thirteen-year-old Nico finds her life on New England's idyllic Mirror Lake irrevocably altered. Left alone to grope toward understanding, she falls into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's boyfriend. Over one haunted summer, Nico faces that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them as she experiences the mystery of loss and recovery. Still, for all the darkness at its heart, Goldengrove is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of adolescence.
This award-winning novel by Francine Prose explores the themes of grief, loss, and coming of age through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Nico, who grapples with the sudden death of her sister and the complicated emotions that arise from her relationship with her sister's boyfriend.
HarperCollins 2024
Editorial Reviews
In Prose's deeply touching and absorbing 15th novel, narrator Nico, 13, comes upon Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring and Fall" (which opens "Margaret, are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving?") in her father's upstate New York bookstore, also named Goldengrove. It's the summer after her adored older sister, Margaret-possessed of beauty, a lovely singing voice and a poetic nature-casually dove from a rowboat in a nearby lake and drowned. In emotive detail, Nico relates the subsequent events of that summer. Nico was a willing confidant and decoy in Margaret's clandestine romance with a high school classmate, Aaron, and Nico now finds that she and Aaron are drawn to each other in their mutual bereavement. Unhinged by grief, Nico's parents are distracted and careless in their oversight of Nico, and Nico is deep in perilous waters before she realizes that she is out of her depth. Prose eschews her familiar satiric mode. She fluidly maintains Nico's tender insights into the human condition as Nico comes to discover her own way of growing up and moving on. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Reading groups should gravitate to prolific writer Prose, who's never been one to eschew controversial subjects: a born-again neo-Nazi in A Changed Man, the sexually charged student/teacher relationship in National Book Award nominee Blue Angel, or the aftermath of a school shooting in the young adult novel After. Narrated by precocious 12-year-old Nico, this poignant novel explores one family's trajectory from life in a New England pastoral to lives of quiet desperation following the drowning death of Nico's older sister Margaret. Emotionally abandoned by a mother seeking solace in tranquilizers and a Walter Mitty-type father intent upon writing his tome on eschatology, Nico finds herself drawn to Margaret's artistic boyfriend, Aaron, whose grief and guilt mirrors her own. As the young couple spends unlimited, unsupervised time together, their relationship takes on a perverse quality, setting a mood of foreboding that is typical of Prose. Though wrapped up a tad too abruptly, this highly accessible novel, lightened with wry humor, is an insightful examination of the various ways people use imagination and memory to cope with devastating loss. Recommended for all public libraries, this book would also appeal to a YA audience. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/15/08.]
—Sally Bissell
The emotional challenges of adolescence are exacerbated by the ordeal of bereavement in Prose's plaintive novel (A Changed Man, 2005, etc.). The stage is set in a first chapter that details the relationship between 13-year-old narrator Nico and her beautiful older sister Margaret, a headstrong charmer who channels the auras of romantic movies and popular songs into a vibrant personality that Nico simultaneously adores and despairs of ever equaling. Then the unthinkable happens. Margaret perishes in a boating accident (on a lake in upstate New York), and Nico is thrust into the maelstrom of grief that afflicts her sister's artistically gifted boyfriend Aaron, her angry and self-pitying mother and her stoical father (owner of the bookstore in which Nico, while browsing, discovers the limpid Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that gave Margaret her name and-Nico surmises-may have influenced her fate). Though less fully plotted than it might be, this moving novel succeeds by sticking closely to Nico's stormy emotions, as she explores the newly aroused fears that redefine her relationship with her parents, while learning on the fly to deal with Aaron's borderline-creepy appropriation of her attention (drawing her into "our hopeless love triangle with the dead"). And Prose gives it a persuasive further dimension in the leitmotif of the historical incident that obsesses Nico's father: the story of a doomsday cult that anticipated the end of the world and awaited the occurrence on a remote promontory thereafter known as Disappointment Hill. As a lucid and moving chronicle of growing up baffled and challenged, this novel is energized by a thoughtful quality of impertinent wit that sometimes recalls J.D.Salinger in his heyday (though many readers will be reminded even more strongly of L.P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between and Ian McEwan's contemporary classic Atonement). Arguably a tad too wistfully meditative, Prose's latest novel nevertheless charms and persuades.
With perfect pitch and no trace of sentimentality, Prose . . . lands on the precise emotional key for this novel . . . allowing humor and compassion to seep through the cracks of an otherwise dark tale.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Ms. Prose is perceptive. . . . Her modest-sounding book turns out to be beautifully wrought.... and yields an unexpectedly rich, tart, eye-opening sense of Nico’s world.” — New York Times
“With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief...Prose exquisitely renders her characters’ grief and bafflement.” — Los Angeles Times
“Arguably, “Goldengrove” is her best book yet.” — Seattle Times
“Prose locates the life force that gives her narrator the quirky, irreverent but undeniable sound of a survivor. . . . Prose is tremendously skilled.” — Chicago Tribune
“Francine Prose’s new novel is a quiet, clear-eyed, sun-dappled eulogy to lost youth, and a youth lost. . . . [Prose is ] a keen chronicler of human emotion.” — Elle
“A page-turner, thanks to its wholly identifiable, and perfectly flawed, young heroine. A-” — Entertainment Weekly
“A beautiful narrative that defines resilience as the sometimes heartbreaking act of simply living” — Redbook Magazine
“A poignant account of growing up amid sorrow...a tender and moving story of adolescent love.” — Hartford Courant
“Prose holds up a mirror to grief and family life we can’t look away from, revealing their truths on page after page, in beautifully crafted writing.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Prose’s skillful rendering of the human ability to accept hard truths and move on is a poignant lesson for us all.” — Miami Herald
“Insightful, lyrical... “Goldengrove” is beautifully and simply written...a moving portrait of the search for identity through a landscape of pain and loss.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Beautifully crafted...perhaps her most emotionally satisfying novel.” — Christian Science Monitor
“An exploration of the fragility of adolescent identity and the perilous undertow of grief” — O magazine
“Prose creates characters with real flaws that make the reader both love and hate them. It is easy to put oneself in the position of any of the players...” — Deseret Morning News
“Deeply touching and absorbing...” — Publishers Weekly
“...emotionally authentic...a ravishing novel of the mystery of death and life’s assertion.” — Booklist (starred review)
Prose locates the life force that gives her narrator the quirky, irreverent but undeniable sound of a survivor. . . . Prose is tremendously skilled.
A beautiful narrative that defines resilience as the sometimes heartbreaking act of simply living
With perfect pitch and no trace of sentimentality, Prose . . . lands on the precise emotional key for this novel . . . allowing humor and compassion to seep through the cracks of an otherwise dark tale.
Francine Prose’s new novel is a quiet, clear-eyed, sun-dappled eulogy to lost youth, and a youth lost. . . . [Prose is ] a keen chronicler of human emotion.
Prose holds up a mirror to grief and family life we can’t look away from, revealing their truths on page after page, in beautifully crafted writing.
A page-turner, thanks to its wholly identifiable, and perfectly flawed, young heroine. A-
Arguably, “Goldengrove” is her best book yet.
A poignant account of growing up amid sorrow...a tender and moving story of adolescent love.
Ms. Prose is perceptive. . . . Her modest-sounding book turns out to be beautifully wrought.... and yields an unexpectedly rich, tart, eye-opening sense of Nico’s world.
With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief...Prose exquisitely renders her characters’ grief and bafflement.
Insightful, lyrical... “Goldengrove” is beautifully and simply written...a moving portrait of the search for identity through a landscape of pain and loss.
...emotionally authentic...a ravishing novel of the mystery of death and life’s assertion.
Prose’s skillful rendering of the human ability to accept hard truths and move on is a poignant lesson for us all.
An exploration of the fragility of adolescent identity and the perilous undertow of grief
Prose creates characters with real flaws that make the reader both love and hate them. It is easy to put oneself in the position of any of the players...
Beautifully crafted...perhaps her most emotionally satisfying novel.
With perfect pitch and no trace of sentimentality, Prose . . . lands on the precise emotional key for this novel . . . allowing humor and compassion to seep through the cracks of an otherwise dark tale.
Prose locates the life force that gives her narrator the quirky, irreverent but undeniable sound of a survivor. . . . Prose is tremendously skilled.
With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief...Prose exquisitely renders her characters’ grief and bafflement.
Prose’s skillful rendering of the human ability to accept hard truths and move on is a poignant lesson for us all.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173488244 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 07/05/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Goldengrove LP
A Novel
Chapter One
We lived on the shore of Mirror Lake, and for many years our lives were as calm and transparent as its waters. Our old house followed the curve of the bank, in segments, like a train, each room and screened porch added on, one by one, decade by decade.
When I think of that time, I picture the four of us wading in the shallows, admiring our reflections in the glassy, motionless lake. Then something—a pebble, a raindrop—breaks the surface and shatters the mirror. A ripple reaches the distant bank. Our years of bad luck begin.
That was how Margaret would have thought. My sister was the poet.
I was Miss One-Thing-After-the-Next. Which is how I remember what happened.
But that's not how it happened at all. One thing happened, then everything else, like a domino falling and setting off a collapse that snakes out toward the horizon and spills over into the future.
If all the clocks and calendars vanished, children would still know when Sunday came. They would still feel that suck of dead air, that hollow vacuum created when time slips behind a curtain, when the minutes quit their orderly tick and ooze away, one by one. Colors are muted, a jellylike haze hovers and blurs the landscape. The phone doesn't ring, and the rest of the world hides and conspires to pretend that everyone's baking cookies or watching the game on TV. Then Monday arrives, and the comforting racket starts up all over again.
Even before that Sunday, I was glad to see the day end. It wasn't that I liked school so much, but the weekends lasted forever. The loneliness, the hours to fill with books,homework, computer, watching old films with my sister, if she was in the mood. Silence, then the Sunday sounds of our house by the lake. My mother playing the piano, my dad's prehistoric Selectric.
That Sunday, that first Sunday in May, was so warm I couldn't help wondering: Was it simply a beautiful day, or a symptom of global warming? Even the trees looked uncomfortable, naked and embarrassed, as if they were all simultaneously having that dream in which you look down and realize you've forgotten to put on your clothes.
Two Cleopatras in our royal barge, my sister and I reclined and let our little rowboat drift out onto the lake. Margaret arched her shoulders, flung one arm over the side, and trailed her fingertips in the water. It was one of those actressy gestures she'd copied from the classic black-and-white movies to which she was addicted. She liked me to watch them with her, and we were allowed to stay up, because our mother said we would learn more from Some Like It Hot than from a year of school. It was often hard to tell what our mother meant, exactly, except that we learned to flutter our lashes and say, "What's a girl to do?" in breathy little-girl whispers.
One thing Margaret and I had in common was: we could do imitations. We knew whole scenes by heart, like the end of Flying Deuces, when Hardy is killed in a plane crash and then reincarnated as a horse with a black mustache and a bowler hat. Laurel's so happy to see him he throws his arms around Ollie—that is, the horse possessed by Ollie's grumpy spirit.
Sometimes Margaret would do a gesture or line and ask me what film it was from. Her silvery laughter was my prize for getting it right. The only rowboat scene I knew was the one in which Montgomery Clift pushes Shelley Winters into the water. And I was pretty certain that wasn't what Margaret was doing.
Margaret said, "This is heaven."
I wished I could have been like her instead of the kind of person who said, "Don't you ever worry about the polar ice caps melting?"
"Debbie Downer," said Margaret. "Give yourself a break. It's Sunday, Nico. Take a day off." Squinting, she aimed her smoke rings so that they encircled the sun like foggy auras.
Margaret had promised our parents she wouldn't smoke. Mom's parents and Dad's father had all died young of smoking-related causes. Both of our parents used to smoke. Their friends had started dying. The new weapon in the arsenal of Mom and Dad's War on Smoking was some bad news we'd gotten that fall: Margaret had a heart condition. A mild one, but I worried.
She'd fainted the first and last time Mom talked us into doing yoga with her. I still have a photo my father took that day on the lawn, of the three of us doing downward-facing dog or some other mortifying position that, our mother had convinced herself, was helping her arthritis. Margaret, Mom, and I are bent till our heads nearly touch the ground, like those snakes that, Margaret told me, bite their tails and roll after the children they swallow whole. Planted apart for balance, our legs take up most of the photo, downward-facing croquet hoops of descending sizes. What the picture doesn't show is that, seconds after it was taken, Margaret collapsed in a pile of leaves. At first we'd thought she was joking.
Our pediatrician, Dr. Viscott, ran some tests and said that Margaret should eat well, exercise, don't smoke. That stutter on her heart graph was something they'd keep their eye on.
Margaret knew she could smoke around me. Smoking was the least of the things she trusted me to keep secret.
From across the lake, we heard our mother practicing the spooky Chopin waltz that always made me think of ballroom dance music for ghosts. She kept making mistakes and starting over again. She'd wanted to be a pianist, she'd gone to music school, but she changed her plans when she met my dad and they ran off to be hippies. Margaret had found a snapshot of them picking soybeans on a commune in northern California. Long hair, overalls, bandannas, a Jesus beard on Dad.
Goldengrove LPA Novel. Copyright © by Francine Prose. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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